Our trip Part I

Anyone notice at what time I am writing this post? Midnight . . . what other time is there? I can't wait until its unusual to sleep from 5 to 11pm and then spend a couple hours catching up on chores before going back to bed! Right now we are still trying to flip Anna's schedule, although we have found it pretty easy to get back to US time ourselves. However, it seems that around 11pm is morning in Anna-land. Good thing she's cute and smiley when she wakes up!

So here's the first installment of our time in Ethiopia. We arrived in Addis Ababa about 10pm on Monday night. We were driven to House of Hope, the transition home where Anna has been staying for the vast majority of her life. We were brought to our room to deliver our things and then brought to the baby room to meet Anna for the first time. We walked in and there she was in her nanny's arms. Wow! She looked just like a baby. Of course, being Mom, I got to hold her first, and passed her on to Dad later. It was easy for us to fall in love with her, but she held out a little on us. That first night she wasn't really interested in looking at us. She came around the next morning as we bumbled our way through feeding and dressing her, and getting ourselves ready, too.

We spent most of Tuesday at HOH, just getting to know Anna. We took a short ride out to tour the city. HOH is truely a home away from home. At times, I was convinced it was even better than home! Where else do you get to stay in a nice cozy room, have someone cook your meals and clean up after? My favorite phrase that week was "Dinner is ready." A close second was "Pancake or omlet?" It was easy to see how much everyone at the HOH loved Anna. We had to practically arm wrestle the nurse for the privelege of feeding and holding her! It was very cool to see everyone there pitching in with the little ones. It would have been unusual if a toddler wandering through the courtyard didn't meet with smiles and hugs from the guard, cook, coordinator and various nannies. I was pleased to see that boys everywhere are the same. Rowdy, loud and fun! We had many opportunities to play and sing and run with three little boys staying at HOH. It made me smile seeing Anna so interested in the boys. I couldn't wait for her to meet her big brother.

More later, bed is calling.

Noelle